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Her foremast carried square sails; her main and mizzen masts were schooner-rigged. Under steam her speed did not exceed six knots. The equipment included a generous outfit of scientific instruments, a supply of dogs and sledges, ten Manchurian or "Shetland" ponies, and a gasoline motor-car.
"Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of about seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of fishing among the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh.
He looked rather glum, however, half an hour afterwards, when the same voice bawled that she was a bull-dog looking craft, schooner-rigged, and pierced for sixteen guns. The Yankee had hoped to fall in with a fat West Indiaman, instead of which he had now to deal with a man-of-war, carrying, perhaps, a larger weight of metal than himself.
As she drew nearer I was able to make her out better, and from her build she carried two masts and was square-rigged forward and schooner-rigged aft as well as from her tawdry gilt figurehead, concluded she was a hermaphrodite brig of, very possibly, Dutch nationality.
At this time the traffic in slaves was very brisk; the demand in the Brazils, in Cuba, and in other Spanish West Indies was urgent, and the profit of the business so great that two or three successful ventures would enrich any one. The slavers were generally small, handy craft; fast, of course; usually schooner-rigged, and carrying flying topsails and forecourse.
She was a powerful schooner-rigged vessel of three hundred tons, as strong as wood and iron could make her; she was handled by a sailing-master who thoroughly understood his work, and she behaved nobly. As the new morning came, the fury of the wind, blowing still from the southwest quarter, subsided a little, and the sea was less heavy.
In a few minutes the world was in a blaze of light, and conspicuous on the troubled but brilliant sea was the long, low, black hull of a schooner-rigged vessel. There seemed no signs of life on board, which sent a chill to our hearts. If our dear captain had been there, would he not have been watching for the daylight as we had been?
Of course he could not make out her name, but he saw that she was schooner-rigged, and felt certain she must be the craft for which he was searching. At the end of the pier he met a dock hand, who had been resting in a nearby shed. "Is that boat the Peacock?" he asked. "Yes, sir." "Do you know anything of the people on board?" "I do not." "Has she a cargo?" "I believe not."
"I 've just got a new boat out from England, schooner-rigged, the Spindrift. I 've not yet really had a fair chance to try her." "Do you go in for tennis?" asked Franco. "We 've got a court at the villa." "I don't know whether you care for swimming," said Baldo. "You get a fairly decent dive-off from the landing-stage at the end of our garden. The water here is pooty good.
The others were the Sir Joseph Banks, a small schooner-rigged vessel; the Patriot, a little sloop; and the Pharos lightship, a large clumsy-looking Dutch-built ship, fitted with three masts, at the top of which were the lanterns. It was intended that this vessel should do duty as a lightship until the lighthouse should be completed.
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